Yasmine Farhat is a 5th year PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Farhat studies how environmental changes impact the movement of metals (both helpful and toxic) in rice paddies, and change the nutritional quality of rice.
Read MoreGabriella Reggiano works in a computational structural biology lab, a fancy way of saying she spends her time at a computer, writing a bunch of code and looking at a lot of protein models. Unlike most scientists, her goal isn’t to answer a fundamental question about the universe, but to develop a method that will make it easier for scientists to understand how proteins move, so they can answer whatever questions spark their curiosity (as long as they’re about proteins).
Read MoreTammi van Neel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Chemistry department at the University of Washington. She develops analytical tools and methods to study how cells communicate with each other using beads that capture small, short-lived signaling molecules.
Read MoreAshley R. Townes is a passion-driven fish ecologist, educator, and international in-field environmental researcher working in the realm of ecological restoration and natural resource management at various international agencies, NGOs, and institutions around the world. At the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, Townes is studying both the behavior and ecology of spawning sockeye salmon ( Oncorhynchus nerka ) and the effects of marine biogenic habitat on groundfish species that are ecological, commercially and economically important.
Read MoreSarah Sweger is a Ph.D. student in the Chemistry department at the University of Washington, but Sweger’s work sits at the crossroads between chemistry, biology, and physics. Sweger’s research focuses on utilizing electrons as magnetic “rulers” to understand the structure and function of proteins and how we can use statistics to determine the reliability of our measurements.
Read MoreEmma Myers is a Ph.D. candidate studying marine geophysics at UW. Her work focuses on characterizing the structure of the Earth beneath the ocean and how the Earth deforms along earthquake-producing subduction zone faults to better understand potential earthquake hazards.
Read MoreBri Gabel is an experienced aquaculturist who managed a community science team for nearly a decade, focusing on rearing jellyfish for aquarium display and scientific research. For the last two years, her jellyfish have been used to help scientists understand what jellyfish are eating and how that might influence the entire Puget Sound food web.
Read MoreKevin Bishop builds machines that shoot lasers at brains to make them glow–a key part of 3D microscopes that scientists and doctors can use to look at individual brain cells. His goal is to use light to make tools to treat brain diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Read MoreChristine Baker, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington, studies the movement of water by currents that are driven by breaking waves along the coast, specifically rip currents, which are hazardous for recreational swimmers. Using large-scale laboratory experiments, she seeks to understand when and how sand, pollutants, larvae, and unsuspecting swimmers move from the region where waves break to the open ocean.
Read MoreHannah Lewis is fascinated by how viruses hijack our cells to cause disease. She is a molecular biology PhD student at the University of Washington studying how Herpes Simplex Virus 1 manipulates proteins that package human DNA.
Read MoreHéctor Delgado Díaz is an astronomer and astrobiologist who is passionate about the search for extraterrestrial life. He studies the efficiency of each observation technique used to look at planets outside the solar system (exoplanets) and creates simulations of how the atmospheres of the exoplanets would look like through the lens of space telescopes.
Read MoreMichele Cadigan is a Ph.D. candidate of Sociology and NSF Graduate Fellow at the University of Washington. She studies the intersection of economic markets and the criminal justice system in the fight for racial justice. Her current work examines how states rewrite criminal laws and build markets for cannabis in ways that facilitate or hinder racial equity and justice.
Read MoreLucas Fifer is a graduate student and researcher in the University of Washington’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, and Astrobiology Program. His research focus is on the subsurface ocean of Enceladus (a moon of Saturn), and whether this ocean could support extraterrestrial life.
Read MoreHalli Benasutti is a biochemistry graduate student at the University of Washington, where she works to develop therapeutics for a disease called muscular dystrophy. Muscular dystrophy is a result of mutations in DNA, which cause the gradual wasting away of patient’s muscles over time, affecting their ability to walk, talk, and even breathe.
Read MoreEllie James is a graduate student in Molecular Engineering who researches tau, a protein that takes on many shapes in healthy individuals, one shape in Alzheimer’s disease, and a unique shape in each other tau-related dementia. Her research will determine what causes tau into specific shapes in disease, which will improve our understanding of how to make medications for dementias.
Read MoreVictoria Rachleff is a Molecular & Cellular Biology Ph.D. student at the University of Washington. Melding her background in neuroscience and interest in virology, Rachleff uses clinical data and animal models to study viruses that infect the nervous system.
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Shervin Sahba is a Physics Ph.D. student at the University of Washington. Shervin studies how to control the flow of light by forecasting its future state, merging methods from computational physics, photonics, and machine learning.
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Amelia J. DuVall spent the last several years getting pooped on while studying seabirds at Channel Islands National Park in southern California. Now a graduate student at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, her research is on seabird ecology, conservation, and management across the Pacific Ocean, from the Channel Islands to French Polynesia.
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Molly Zych studies cell division in order to understand how human cells accurately separate DNA into two new daughter cells. Using microscopy and cell biology tools Molly hopes to understand why errors occur in this process and how they contribute to both developmental disorders and cancer advancement.
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Natalie Mastick is a Ph.D. student in Aquatic Sciences at UW and a Graduate Fellow with Oceans Initiative, and she studies how parasites affect marine mammals in Puget Sound. She uses historical ecology to figure out how parasite abundances in fish have changed over the course of the past century, and works to determine how parasitized the whales that eat those fish species are today using recently collected fecal samples.
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